At Least One Auto Exec Wants More Environmental Regulation. Here’s Why

It’s no secret that the car biz employs a lot of conservative thinkers and traditionalists. It’s no surprise, either—building cars is a colossally complex enterprise, and changes are both challenging and costly. But I recently had the chance to sit down with Jörg Grotendorst, Senior VP of R&D at Magna, one of the world’s largest auto suppliers, and as he spoke I felt my head tilting like my dog’s does when she hears a new sound. He’s not only bullish on electric cars—he believes government regulation is the only catalyst that can clean up the automobile industry.

«To make transportation safe and sustainable, we need legislation,» Grotendorst said to me and other writers in a media briefing roundtable. «People are not self-motivated. If we [were] self-motivated, we would all compromise right now, nowadays already, and pay the extra cost to drive electric cars.»

He meant that consumers and companies aren’t going to shell out more money for environmentally friendly vehicles without laws forcing them to. I don’t disagree, but was still pretty surprised to hear a high-ranking business guy staunchly advocating for more regulation in his industry. Execs typically claim the free market will fix everything, but Grotendorst seemed more realistic.

«Do you think people would have been willing to pay extra for a diesel particulate filter or something like that? No … do you think anti-lock braking systems would have made it [into every car] if there had been no legislation?»

Grotendorst went on to cite seat belts, airbags, and as a more modern example, driver-assistance tech, as all things that improved car safety and were ultimately pushed to ubiquity by legislation.

He even discussed individual transportation, and privately owned cars, with a level of self-awareness and candor I would never expect from somebody in his position. «I think we all love to be independent, [but] from a pure economic aspect, is it sensible to drive a vehicle? No, it’s not. [A] typical vehicle has less than 10% of lifetime usage … 90% of the time it stands around.» That split surely looks a little different in rural America than urban Europe, but the point's still valid.

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